Sign of the times

“When did you stop consulting astrologers?” is not the sort of question that might normally be posed to European commissioners – and still less to the business-like Neelie Kroes, now the commissioner for the digital agenda.

But according to her colourful ex-husband, Bram Peper, she regularly sought the advice of five astrologers and soothsayers between 1991 and 2003, not only to help her make decisions on business deals, but also in her private life.

Peper, a former mayor of Rotterdam and a minister in Wim Kok’s second government, makes the claims in a yet-to-be released biography of Kroes. A Dutch newspaper quotes him as worrying about the advice she was getting: “I thought that the contacts were making Neelie vulnerable. But you know, at a certain point you have to learn to live with other people’s eccentricities.”

Kroes clearly didn’t see this coming, and is not commenting on the claims. But there may be some EU precedent. Back in the 1990s, the then French commissioner Edith Cresson was rumoured to be paying her dentist, René Berthelot, for astrological advice, though a significant difference is that the payments were made by putting Berthelot on the EU payroll. Kroes seems to have received better counsel, wherever she obtained it. With the notable exception of the declining shipping firm Nedlloyd, most of the companies she worked for at the time were successful, and her career blossomed. The same cannot be said for Cresson, whose eccentricities played a central role in the collapse of the Commission of Jacques Santer.